I might be completely wrong, but...

Having a think recently and a chat with a couple of people over the withdrawal from public life of SI- even PaulC has advised he will duck out of front line replies- here (#173)- as ever, the negative tools affecting the majority.

Whatever about the subbie forum- it’s a pain and a massive customer relations own goal, though not a game breaker- but the lack of communication on Beta Forums is bemusing.

Now, Beta is where the testing of the new ME, innovations, fixes etc occur. We have Miller and Coppell. Miller being the initial testing vehicle GW and Coppell ensuring Miller haven’t been too crap. New ideas are vocalised in the forums and often you would get interaction with the Devs etc. picking ideas to pieces in a, generally, constructive way (this is the main difference with Beta, it actually contains most people that have a positive interest in the game. Any trolling and they get kicked from Beta)

And here comes the problem, there has still been no further interaction since I posted a few weeks ago. This is very strange. Even accounting for it being SI holiday time this kind of silence in Beta is in my experience, unheard of.

Normally after an upgrade has been finished it gets ‘locked’ and then is practically ready to roll out. Then Miller gets a few new additions to test, look at, discuss. The last client upgrade of any note was around 6 weeks ago. This again is unheard of.

Now, some people have suggested the game is dying and this is a pointer (yep, normal trolls on the Subbie forums with so little in their lives that they continue to post about a game they have given up on). I am more positive. I think something is coming, some announcement. Kriss says SI are still overseeing on the forums and is still looking forward (or 'east' as he cryptically mentions here). He might be putting a brave face on things, but I’d prefer to think that he either knows something or is just as positive.

If it is an announcement, let’s play for a moment, what could it be? Whatever about the doom-mongers, I’m going to look positively. I’m going for it having something to do with FMO (The Korean Version announced last June/July ish). I wonder if they are finishing that off  and the Devs are helping that project hit the ground running.

I have no proof or evidence, but it just seems the time would be around about right-dev time is not obviously being used on FML (although it might be behind the scenes) and it would explain a lot of the recent occurences.

What impact this might have on FML is to be seen- whether it is happening now nor not, it is going to happen sometime…. It just looks like the stars are aligned.